


Crimson Bond

by ninemoons42



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, Genderswap, Gothic, M/M, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:38:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Crimson Bond

  
title: Crimson Bond  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 1470  
fandoms: Dracula, Jane Eyre, McFassy  
rating: R  
notes: This one is a little...complicated. A response to the following McFassy fic prompt: _Jane Eyre AU where Rochester's secret is not that he has a wife - but that he is a vampire. With James as Jane._ Bearing in mind that BBC Radio Ulster is currently broadcasting a 10-part abridged version of Dracula with Michael Fassbender reading as Jonathan Harker [and the Count], I wrote this. Cleaned up and expanded from [the original Tumblr post](http://tumblr.com/ZIJNMxBMCy16).

  
It was a night of howling wind and pelting rain, a sky that lowered over Thornfield Hall like a terrible, overpowering cloak that dulled the senses and caught at the mind.

I had sat with my Adele as was my custom, soothing her to sleep. These days she was looking alarmingly pale - although, with the lack of sun, we were all feeling weak and unhealthy. How I longed for sunny skies and the scent of new-mown hay! For the roses and the cherry blossoms once again! I wanted to run over the hills and walk through the groves on the manor grounds. But winter had come so suddenly, so unlooked-for, dark and damp and moaning against the walls.

As I crept back to my chambers I felt discontent. If spring came, why then we’d not be seeing the master of the house for a long time, Mrs. Fairfax had explained. Edward Fairfax Rochester was a man who preferred long nights and deep snow, and he’d leave at the turn of the season as he always did.

Yet how could I face the prospect? Thornfield without its master was a living being deprived of its beating heart, its life’s blood. Even stately Dame Fairfax and little Adele would wilt and droop without his imperious commands and his honest glances. And if the master could arouse such feelings in those who were bound in his orbit as they were – what else could I do but bind myself as well.

As I turned the corner to my room, there was a sharp, sudden scent of hot copper in the air.

A soft whisper of movement behind me. A voice that was familiar and strange at once.

“James,” Mr. Rochester said. Here was his familiar face: broad forehead, hair silvering at the temples and falling down every which way. His eyes seemed to gleam in the flickering light of my candle. And his mouth had never seemed so red and ruddy before. “James Eyre,” he said.

“I am sorry to have disturbed your rest, sir,” I said. “I will leave you, now, and I shall go and seek mine.” I bowed to him and made to turn back toward my door – when there was a hard hand on my wrist, such unfathomable strength.

“No. Don’t turn away from me.” A strange command. Mr. Rochester was peering at me, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “I wish you to look at me, James. You, who have never been afraid to challenge me and speak freely to me.”

“If I speak freely to you, sir,” I said, “it is because I have the utmost confidence in that small regard that you might have for me – not a regard between a master and his hireling but a regard that might exist between two who might become friends.”

“I have not had much occasion for friends.” And here the look in his eyes burned darkly, and I would have stepped back if I could.

But for all this I could not be afraid of him still. Perhaps it was foolishness, and perhaps it was blind reckless courage such as I had often been accused of in my life. I would rather have had that folly than fear Mr. Rochester.

And now that I was so close, I could smell the scent that had so disturbed me – strongest around his face, around his mouth.

The candlelight revealed deep shadow and dark red, already drying in a pattern and hue that I was familiar with, smeared around my master’s face.

Blood, I thought, distant and hazy and confused. That cup that he drinks from at all of his meals, never touching the food laid before him. The cup was full of blood.

 _Vampire,_ my mind said. My master was a creature that fed on blood. A creature of darkness and shadows, loathing the sun and the sky full of blue daylight.

 _Poor wretch_ , my heart replied. _Alone and shunned and friendless. I must succor him, if I can._

Hardly daring, I reached up, and pulled my collar aside. “Sir,” I whispered, and I closed my eyes.

He said my name again, once: “James.”

And then: sharp, hot points in my skin, and I swooned. A strange, hot bliss and a freezing, overpowering fear. Mr. Rochester’s hands, tight at the scruff of my neck and the wrist by which he still held me fast.

I could feel his mouth on my skin, the bright rush of my blood and his tongue. He was so close; I only needed to look down and there were his eyes, gleaming pale gold now, fixed on me with a crimson shadow in their depths.

After another long minute, another fleeting moment, I heard him swallow. I felt him pass his tongue once more over my skin and it was strange; I could feel the wounds he’d made knitting back together.

“I have not had this gift given to me so freely, so trustingly, in so long,” Mr. Rochester said. Now the hand around my wrist was gentler, though still he would not let me go – nor would I have left him even if he had released me and commanded me to hasten away. “Do you know what you have done, James Eyre?”

“No, sir, and it does not seem so important now,” I said. “I am content to know that what I have done was right. Oh, not by ordinary standards I am sure. But for that compact which lies between you and me, it was good, and even moral.”

A short, harsh laugh, and he turned away from me. “You would brush aside others’ scorn for this? For me? Would you even turn away from this house? From your ward and from your friends here?”

“I will give my allegiance to them whom I choose,” I said, “and I make my own choices. You, sir, have been endlessly kind to an orphan and outcast, and for that alone I would give you my loyalty, whether you would accept it or not.”

Mr. Rochester was silent for a long time.

The cocks began to crow for dawn.

“Among my...kind there is only one way of expressing loyalty,” he said. “There is a certain set of vows that we pronounce, and we – ” He turned back to me, and smiled, although it was not a smile of pleasure or happiness. It was a smile that showed off the badge of his species: his teeth – fangs – unearthly and unmistakable.

“We pledge ourselves,” he went on. “Unlife and undeath, until sun or fire or consecrated material should destroy us.” He looked away. “I would have to ask you to be...like me. And I would not. You are a source of good and you do not hurt me in any way. I would have you remain as you are: kind ministering spirit, casting gentle blessing upon an undeserving wretch.”

I seized his hand, then. Perhaps the sun coming so swiftly had made my decision for me, one that I was glad to affirm. “Ask me, sir.”

“No, James. I will not bear your pity. I would rather you continued on along your appointed path, and I will follow that which is mine.”

“Ask me,” I said, insistent. “And for your own sake please hasten. You must go to your rest soon.”

I looked him full in the eyes and hoped he could see that I was resolute.

“Why are you so kind to me,” he said, at last, and he dropped to his knees. “I would ask you to stay, James Eyre. Join me. Be with me. Now and always.”

I placed both of my hands on his head, feeling the rough curls of his hair beneath my fingers. My eyes were on the eastern horizon, watching anxiously, lest the sun rise and catch my master unawares. “I will stay, sir. Let me remain with you. Always.”

He was silent before me for so long, I feared for his life – and between one breath and the next he was smiling, he was picking me up and he was bearing me away, fleet of foot through the dark corridors of Thornfield Hall. The door closing behind us, just as the sun began to rise.

My master’s chambers. He laid me down on his bed and stood, irresolute – and then, at last, he produced a dirk from his coat. I looked away, bared my throat once again – but there was a wound in his wrist and he was pressing it to my mouth, and he simply commanded me: “Drink.”

I obeyed. Sweet rush of borrowed blood, borrowed life, heavy and drugging on my tongue, as he bit into my flesh once more.

This time, when the darkness came for me, I gave myself over to it completely, trusting my master – my Edward – to lead me where he wanted me to go.  



End file.
